firsts Archives - Page 5 of 9 -

One Year Later

January 1, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

It feels as though the post on my one-year anniversary of blogging ought to be profound. I started off trying to write something like that, but it’s not working and will be relegated to another post, another day.

New Year’s Day usually feels quiet to me. A calm before the bustle of January, when the it’s-the-holidays excuses for being lazy or skipping out early no longer work. That’s what January 1, 2011 felt like to me.

I have a vivid mental picture of that day, which I don’t have for most New Year’s Days (tending, as they do, to all blur together). I had spent New Year’s Eve 2010 in the usual fashion—with Chinese food followed by blissful nothingness—with one critical difference. That last night of 2010 I sat on the floor of our living room, in front of the fire, and set up a blog in WordPress.

It was totally unplanned. I had been thinking about writing about my experience with motherhood, but I hadn’t really thought about it being so specifically about PPD and I really hadn’t thought about getting into blogging. And yet there I was with wordpress.com on the screen in front of me and before I knew it this blog was born.

It was a short time later that I became Farewell Stranger, but at that time I was simply MamaRobinJ. I had a basic blog and a Twitter account (because I didn’t want to use my professional Twitter persona for this very personal project) and I decided I was going to do it. And then I went to bed.

The next day, during the quietness that was January 1, 2011, I got a direct message on my other Twitter account from my boss. “MamaRobinJ is a great idea,” he said. And my heart exploded in holy-shit-fuelled adrenaline.

That was the start of what became a slow progression towards having it be okay to talk about this. I would say a year later I’m 95% there – it’s still not something I bring up early on when I meet new people, and the people at my new job don’t know this about me yet (unless they’ve Googled me, in which case hi!). But it’s no longer an oh-God-please-don’t-find-my-blog sort of thing.

For I guess that’s the beauty of blogging, isn’t it? It can be whatever we want. If we want to be anonymous, we can. If we want to use it to say, “This is who I really am. This is my experience. Do you still love me?” we can.

One year later, this is who I really am. And not because I hid who I was, but because this blog, and those of you who have been with me during the last year, have allowed the protective shell I placed around myself to crack and let the light in.

One year later, this is who I really am. Because you still love me.

Image credit: ms.Tea on Flickr

So today, on this New Year’s Day that feels not quiet but alive with possibility, I wish to say thank you. Thank you for this last year. Thank you for loving me.

Have a cupcake.

Filed Under: Happy things, Love letters, Motherhood, Postpartum depression, Writing · Tagged With: blogging, community, firsts, gratitude, perspective, spreading the love, we're not alone

10 steps to a chaotic Christmas

December 28, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Step 1: Move into a new house in a new city less than a month before Christmas. Unpack as much as you can and then stuff everything else into the basement and the spare bedroom upstairs. Pray no one needs to get in there.

Step 2: Agree to host Christmas for most of your family because you’re the house that makes the most sense this year.

Step 3: Start a new job the week before Christmas, making it tough to get all those last-minute errands done.

Step 4: Forego your usual practice of making many, many lists and figure it will all work out.

Step 5: Make one exception to Step 4 and hastily make a grocery list the morning of the 23rd before you go to work. That way your husband can do the shopping and you’ll still have time to pick up all the things you forgot.

Step 6: Hide stocking stuffers and gifts in various places around your new house. Having to look for them at 9:00 on Christmas Eve so you can finish wrapping will provide a different sort of orientation to the house you’ve only lived in for 3 weeks.

Step 7: Start cooking on Christmas Eve morning by just doing things as the thought occurs to you. Send someone down the street to the grocery store for the items you forgot in your half-awake list-making state.

Step 7 1/2: Thank your lucky stars Santa’s helpers are there to pitch in.

Step 8: Realize you forgot some of the presents you meant to get, are short on some critical elements of Christmas Dinner (pickles) and neglected to appropriately plan for the vegetables you wanted to serve.

Step 9: Decide that this is the “wing it” Christmas and none of the above issues matter. This philosophy will be reinforced when your three-year-old opens his stocking on Christmas morning with a face lit up with joy and says, “He came! Santa knows me!”

Step 10: Have a very merry chaotic Christmas with great family and the best damn turkey ever cooked in a brand-new-to-us oven. (And we didn’t set fire to the turkey like we did the first year in our old house!)

I hope your holiday was great and you’re getting a little down time before January comes and things ramp up again.

[Pictures #2 and 5 credited to my sister, the other iPhone addict.]

Filed Under: Happy things · Tagged With: anxiety, family, firsts, gratitude, photos

Paradigm Shift

December 12, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

I walk every day, and everything is new.

There’s no doubt I’m somewhere different.

The community we live in now is not one I was familiar with. We chose it, bought a house, and moved here, knowing nothing. Being here is an evolution, a revolution, a metamorphosis.

I’m revelling in the ordinariness of life when it is anything but. Exploring a new grocery store is an adventure. Sideways traffic lights and fire hydrants that are yellow instead of red are notable, if only to me.

Every side street and every path holds promise. Footsteps disappear between the trees and I follow them.

An open space. Late afternoon sun lighting the trees on fire.

Further down, the horizon peeks through.

Snow is heavy on the branches. Sparkling white, gentle, pristine.

Bright red berries speak of the season.

Even the birds have a place to retreat to.

I have walked a lot over the last few years because the dog demands it, but it was always one more thing on the to-do list. A pain, not a pleasure. I walked but didn’t see.

Now I walk every day. A choice, not a chore. And I see because I’m looking.

And I’m watching my paradigm shift.

Filed Under: Happy things, Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: favourite activities, firsts, gratitude, living life, perspective, photos

On the Road to Wisdom

November 27, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
~ Khalil Gibran

At the beginning of this year I did two things: I started this blog and I joined a One Little Word class. I thought I’d write here a bit and see where it went, and here I am almost a year later, fully immersed. I thought I’d dive right into the One Little Word class and do all the exercises, and almost a year later I haven’t done many of them but my word is fully immersed in my life.

I had a tough time choosing the word, and was skeptical about the common “the word will choose you” reassurance. Initially I thought I’d choose “improve” as my word because that’s what I wanted to do in many areas of my life. But thinking that was a good word was really a symptom of my problem, and luckily I came to my senses and realized that was too self-critically negative.

And then my word chose me.

I don’t remember how it happened. It just came to me one day, I think, and that was that. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I do now.

Seek.

verb, sought, seek·ing.

–verb (used with object)

1. to go in search or quest of: to seek the truth.

2. to try to find or discover by searching or questioning: to seek the solution to a problem.

3. to try to obtain: to seek fame.

4. to try or attempt (usually fol. by an infinitive): to seek to convince a person.

5. to go to: to seek a place to rest.

6. to ask for; request: to seek advice.

7. Archaic: to search or explore.

For too long I was too proud to weep (figuratively, anyway, or at least in public) and too grave to laugh. I lost sight of what was important.

Actually, I don’t think I knew what was important.

I do now. In part, at least. I was seeking something I didn’t know was lost, and now I’ve started to find my way back to it.

I was seeking myself.

This search (journey? quest?) has led me places I would not have anticipated a year ago, and now a new stage is beginning.

A new home.

A new place.

A new start.

I look forward to where seeking wisdom will take me, and what part of myself I will find on the way there.

Linked up with:

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Filed Under: Be enough me, Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: Be enough me, expectations, firsts, gratitude, hope, living life, perspective, The Universe

New House and New Traditions

November 4, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

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So, we bought a house yesterday.

<– That’s it. Pretty good, eh?

We jogged into town on Wednesday afternoon, bought an iPhone (because, obviously) and started looking at houses yesterday at 10 am. The deal was done about 10:00 last night.

We are totally thrilled with how this worked out. It’s almost miraculous. We got a house we love and – get this – the possession date we wanted. We’ve agreed to be out of our house by the 26th and will be into the new one on the 28th. Of November.

So that means we’ll be in our new house for Christmas.

I’m not actually sure what our Christmas plans will be this year, but I think it’s going to be a little odd. We’ve spent every Christmas except two at home with my parents and other assorted family. We’ve picked out a tree at the same nursery every year. We’ve done the same lights tour. We’ve eaten Christmas dinner at the same table and hung our stockings from the same fireplace. Those things will change and it will be okay, though I’m feeling a bit sentimentally sad about it.

What we will have, however, is this, which we woke up to this morning:

There’s actually no guarantee we’ll have a white Christmas but if we do I will be a very happy girl. Despite many years on the coast, it never feels like Christmas without snow. And I think this little dude will like it too:

We’ll be in town for good just in time to gear up for Christmas, which will involve my sister and her husband, and my parents are planning to come out too. My mother-in-law lives here, so we won’t be short on family.

And it will be kind of fun to start new traditions and find new holiday comforts. We’ll go visit the great light display they do in a park here and actually enjoy hot chocolate in the car without being too warm. I’ll prove to Connor that I do, in fact, know how to build a snowman. We’ll bake my mom’s Christmas cookies in our new oven in our totally awesome new kitchen, and then we’ll sit by our new fireplace and eat them. (Or maybe I’ll leave the boys downstairs and eat mine upstairs because our new bedroom has a fireplace in it. Squee!) We’ll introduce our stockings to their new home and make sure Santa knows we’ve moved.

And we’ll enjoy the snow. Until we’re sick of it.

***

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